Official Met Office App released for Windows Phone 8

There are a number of weather related apps in the marketplace but this one stands out for a few reasons. The Met Office is the UK’s National Weather Service and is therefore the trusted supplier of weather information to everyone from the military or the man on the street.

They have released an official app for Windows Phone 8 that supports Live Tiles, double wide tiles in a super extensive and well-designed package. The app will only show weather for the United Kingdom but anyone can download it. Still interested? Read on past the break to find out more…

Windows Phone 8 is still just starting to gain momentum with picking up dedicated and enhanced apps made specifically for it. We’re always pleased to see official apps hit the platform but even more so when those apps are truly useful. Here is a list of the apps highlights:-

5-day UK forecasts

National severe weather warnings

Daily weather maps

Save and access your favourite locations

Three-hourly forecasts out to five days ahead

Probability of precipitation

UV forecast maps

Feels like temperature

Interactive weather maps

More detailed weather warning information

Live Tiles (Including that double wide WP8 style tile)

The app looks good, adhering to a panoramic layout well, performance is great also. The icons and artwork do look *almost* like metro icons but not quite. It would be nice to see them fully embrace the metro design aesthetic fully but it’s still attractive. In terms of content, you have everything from severe weather warnings, pinnable cities and it even has some augmented reality!

The app is free but looks to be about to pick up some ad-supported content at some point. At present there are placeholders to “Advertise here”. Considering the quality of the app and the fact its data from the most reliable source the ads aren’t so bad.

It's good to see this 1.0 version of the app pick up so many Windows Phone 8 features on the first pass, all that’s missing is some NFC action. Head on and check it out, and let us know

Download it from the marketplace here or scan the QR code to download direct to your phone. The app is available for Windows Phone 8 devices only.

I tried this out - its fairly good but the live tile wasn't updating and if I selected to get the forecast for the current GPS location, it wouldn't show me this info from the last update without the GPS being turned on when I started the app.